1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display element manufacturing method and manufacturing apparatus and a circuit forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Widely used as display apparatuses are display media that use liquid crystals or organic EL, etc. In addition, in such display media, technology that uses active drive elements comprised of thin film transistors (TFT) as pixel drive elements in order to ensure uniformity of screen illumination intensity and screen rewriting speed is becoming the mainstream.
In recent years, in order to pursue cost reductions of active drive elements, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-079560, research and development on thin film transistors that use organic semiconductor materials has been vigorously progressing. Because these thin film transistors can be manufactured in a low-temperature process, it is possible to use resin substrates that are light and tend to crack, and it is said that flexible display apparatuses that use resin film can be achieved. In addition, by using organic semiconductor materials, which can be manufactured by a wet processes such as printing or coating under atmospheric pressure, there is the possibility of being able to achieve display apparatuses that are excellent in terms of producability and are extremely low in cost. In this Patent Document 1, liquid crystal display elements are disclosed as display apparatuses that use thin film transistors. In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-155858 discloses an organic EL element manufacturing method resulting from a similar printing method.
In general, the response performance of thin-film transistors (TFT) is such that the length of the channel length between the source electrode and the drain electrode is important. As disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-079560, adequate resolution cannot be achieved in systems that merely irradiate light to perform exposure. In addition, display apparatuses are becoming larger, and substrates are becoming larger. When substrates become larger, masks must also become larger, and large increases in the cost of mask manufacture become a problem.